You can respond w/parade of horribles about cosmetics,
pharmaceuticals, orthotics, taillights for automobiles—entire market would change.
On the flip side, you won’t trap innocent infringers b/c none will be
infringers. You’re just updating for new tech, but these techs existed 100
years ago. INS v. AP: electronic
transmission in US is unfair competition.
Ben Hur: taking a physical book and turning it into a new medium,
movies. Remind us: each case allows us
to think about private law approaches’ interaction w/IP.

The Nature of IP

Moderator: Prof. Ruth Okediji, University of Minnesota Law School

Prof. Henry E. Smith, Harvard Law School: Why private
law/IP? Concrete cases, historical and
current through private law lens, they’re better as IP cases then
conventionally thought to be. People
think private law = property all the time, and that’s not the case.

INS v. AP, eBay v. Mercexchange, and patent v.
copyright. INS v. AP: Held up as a
Frankenstein’s monster of potential property rights generated in a
free-floating way. But if you read it
all the way through, there’s material for thinking that but also a lot else
going on. It’s a classic equity case.
Court says over and over it’s quasi-property, doesn’t bind the world.
Let’s take that seriously. Antecedently
we have to take equity as a concept seriously.
Does that make it even worse? No:
equity cases in that period featured presumptions, constraints, rules of thumb,
intersection w/commercial morality that didn’t make it free-floating exercise
in Lockean fairness or unconstrained policy analysis. As an equity case, it makes more sense,
though you can still disagree; it’s really an unfair competition case.

eBay: Another equity case; cobbled together a test that was
different from traditional test that emphasized more presumptions, good faith, and
undue hardship. The traditional approach
based on the idea that there were situations of repeated violations/irreparable
harm that got us most of the way to injunction but then we’d pull back if there
was good faith + disproportionate hardship. Tailored to the idea of
opportunism. If the motivation was trolls, makes sense to focus on
opportunism/unfair surprise. Fewer
injunctions may be good, but a test that doesn’t turn on good faith/undue
hardship will have a lot of mischief—the truly traditional test would do better
if the problem is really trolls. [I want
to hear him talk about the tax evasion/tax avoidance distinction that arguably
mapped better onto Aereo than other
analogies. Or Kozinski on how IP rights emit no penumbras.]

IP regimes are not all equally property like. Patent law is more property like; Patrick
Goold has been writing about how copyright is more tort-like. Patent—abstracted
from use, more like trespass. Idea of differing property-ness is important.
These issues are still relevant: hot news and misappropriation claims now more
than ever. eBay is wreaking havoc in the federal courts. Private law lens can add a lot to the mix.

Aaron Cooper, Business Software Alliance (former Counsel to
the Senate Judiciary Committee): Incentives and fundamental fairness—instinctively
we feel that if we create something, others shouldn’t be able to take it. AIA: shift in review of patents post-grant. New system is more adversarial for post-grant
review after issuance; after 9 months, you can only challenge on limited set of
grounds. Certainty for patent owners,
business owners, users. Certainty works
well for everyone (but bad actors)—patent w/50% chance of invalidity is not
good for anyone.

Once it had been determined that an invention qualified as
IP, SCt will refer to private law notions and talk about the issues before the
Court in property terms, as in Festo or
Nautilus—use language of property
right, drawing on private law concepts/analogy to the deed. We want to get the
incentives right by creating enough of a property interest but not so much that
we stifle innovation.

In whether patentability exists: No Lockean notion of
entitlement to fruits of labor. May take
a lot of work to identify/isolate plant, but that doesn’t entitle you to a
property right in Myriad. Gov’t isn’t asserting its own interest over a
thing, but rather leaving it open and uncontrolled. Private law concepts of defining property don’t
seem to be much use b/c courts are worried about tilting in Lockean direction
rather than striking the right policy balance.
Seems like an interesting contrast to him.

Prof. Robert P. Merges, University of California, Berkeley
School of Law: IP is property, but property-ism isn’t property absolutism. Institution of property is much more flexible
and nuanced than a lot of the critics of IP would say. Does eBay make patents “less
than property”? No. Analogies:
encroachment/forced sale/conversion where lots of value has been added. We have now over-solved the problem of
trolls, as if we treated a headache with ibuprofen and aspirin and scotch. That’s
led to the §101 cases that are fundamentally off track. The reason you can’t
locate good property reasoning in those cases is that they’re sui generis. The
remedy driven view of property is too limited.
The real action in eBay is old
equitable concepts of hardship, good faith, etc.

Usual role of the state: passive enforcement of private
bargains; role of state is always to grant the rights but w/patents that’s more
visible b/c the right is more complicated.
Basic aim: identify rights, then let owners loose on the
marketplace. Occasional rule: insure
legitimacy of market transactions; prevent undue leverage/undue hardship in the
market.

eBay within patent law: 75% of cases still get injunctions;
where you don’t, tend to have the eBay
concurrence factors indicating that there’s undue leverage.

[I took a phone call]

Verilli: Aereo has a tentative quality: we aren’t saying
anything else is public performance etc.
Lacks same confidence w/IP as w/other areas it has handled.

Cooper: Figuring out the contours of the property right v.
figuring out level of enforcement. Aereo, more than patent cases, looks like I
know it when I see it, and so does INS v. AP.
There are words around it to try to provide some structure for lower
courts, but it’s still Stewart’s obscenity.

Okediji: Private law as a basket of tools. Courts are more
confident when they think they’re targeting bad actors. Has the IPR system actually provided
certainty for property owners? The investment in innovation took place long
before the IPR stage. AIA changes may
give us better stronger patents, but would that really help the property
interests of those investing in innovation in the first place.

Cooper: ideally, we’d make sure that the terms were as clear
as possible when granted.

Merges: it was a bad time to do away with formalities, given
the rise of the internet and the need to track rights. When we have a way to track individual
property rights that’s relatively costless, it’s good. TM, patents: I disagree that IP is
regulation, but the differences b/t IP and real property is more complex system
of registering, maintaining, and contesting rights, b/c mapping contours of
idea is inherently more complex and overlapping than w/real property. Ideal
division of labor b/t initial examination and post-grant review for all 3 (not
trade secret? RoP). PTAB/high volume of
IPRs shows that AIA was right that people wanted a cheaper way to quiet title.
We may need corrections in IPR review, but it’s cheaper than district courts,
which gets rid of more nuisance suits/weeds out patents.

Prof. Lemley’s idea of no examination: that’s one of the
bigger failures b/c people want more clarity, fewer cases in district court.
But ½ of Fed. Cir. caseload is reviewing PTAB decisions, a big change in 5-8
years. Optimal division b/t
registration, post-grant review, and rare district court determination of
validity. We should think about that as system design. Once you have that right
out there, it becomes a private law system.

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